Dear Julia:

I often have premonitions. Sometimes I see and feel things before they happen in the form of a day dream when I close my eyes. Could you please let me know how to increase this ability so I can help people with their problems?

Mahesh

Dear Mahesh:

The main thing I recommend is for you to engage in regular meditation. By cultivating the ability to quiet your mind while opening your heart to whatever healing guidance is needed, you'll naturally grow better at all sorts of psychic skills. It's also powerful to set a clear intention for where you want to go with all of this, and trust Spirit to guide you. I made a similar decision many years ago when I started having spontaneous spirit communication. I told the Universe that I wanted to further develop my abilities so that I could help the grieving, and immediately, all sorts of signs and synchronicities began to lead me to what I needed in order to move forward.

It would also be wise to develop a strong relationship with your spirit guides. There are lots of ways to go about this; I don't have room to go into them here. There are different levels of psychic experience available to us. It's one thing to set an intention of predicting the future and another to devote yourself to doing Spirit's work in the world by becoming a source of love and healing for people. Your spirit guides will help you stay on track with fulfilling your highest destiny.

To launch a higher level of experience, it may be helpful to back up a bit to build a strong psychic foundation. Then you will have practical tools and skills you can fall back on when the visions aren't flowing in as clearly as you'd like them to.

A simple first step toward psychic development is to work with divination tools like pendulums, tarot cards and runes. I'll focus on pendulums here, since they're the easiest to learn. You can buy lovely pendulums made of crystals and such in most New Age stores, but you don't need anything fancy to get the answers you desire. When I was taught how to work with a pendulum, the entire class was handed a metal nut (as in nuts and bolts) tied to a piece of string.

Before working with any divination tool, first center yourself and raise your vibration. There are lots of ways to raise your vibration in general, and I've written on this subject extensively in the past. The higher your normal vibration, the higher the level of insight and wisdom you will be able to tap into.

When sitting down to work with a divination tool, it's wise to create something of a little ritual in order to train your whole being to shift into the state you want to embody so you can get clear, helpful guidance. The first step is to take your vibration even higher by playing some soothing New Age music. You might also light some incense and gently waft it all around your aura. As you do this, visualize all mundane concerns drifting away while you summon extraordinary feelings of love, light, peace and gratitude.

If you're reading for someone else, hold that person in your mind and send them love and good wishes through your heart while you say a prayer to set your intention. Here is the prayer that I say before I begin each reading:

Mother/Father/God, as we open the doorway to communication, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, the great I Am presence of the Universe, we give thanks, for we know that the words spoken or written will be filled with the love, truth, wisdom and understanding of the highest. I open my heart with love and compassion for ____________ [name of client] and pray that I may be a clear channel of God's love and light.

As I am saying this prayer, I am visualizing myself filling with divine light. I see that light flowing in through the crown of my head and then out through my heart to connect with the person I'm reading for.

Next, dangle the pendulum out in front of you and then "prime" it by saying, "Show me yes." For me, the pendulum always spins in a clockwise direction for yes. Then ask it, "Show me no." For me, it always spins counter-clockwise for no. This is your own language, mind you, so as long as the answer is clear to you, it doesn't matter if it moves in circles or back and forth. Before launching into your specific questions, it's important to ask if it would be wise to pursue those answers.

If the answer is no, there is no point in pushing it, for you will probably just lead yourself astray. You can, however, ask various yes/no questions to try to determine why it would be unwise to ask a certain question. Often, blocks arise simply because the question we have in mind is not the question we should really be asking.

Don't rest your elbow on anything while working with the pendulum, for your own arm will be subtly influencing the pendulum to deliver the answers. This doesn't mean you're making stuff up; it means that you're tapping into knowledge that is beyond your conscious awareness.

By meditating and working with a pendulum in this way, you'll tell your subconscious mind that you want to further develop your psychic abilities, which should naturally lead to new progress. It sounds like you're well on your way down that path since you already have visions. To induce more of them, follow the steps I outlined above for getting ready to work with a divination tool. Then close your eyes and relax. Hold whatever question you want answers to in your mind and heart, and then pay attention to the thoughts, feelings and images that come up for you.

If you're not sure what they mean, you can ask more questions to illicit further information. If you're still not sure, this is when your experience with divination tools will come in handy, for you can use them to confirm your interpretation of the impressions that came to you. When I first began to do reading work, I employed a combination of divination tools, clairvoyance and direct channeling of Spirit. This empowered me to check what I was getting against a number of different processes, and it led to very full, detailed readings. Eventually, I decided that using all of those processes was overkill, so these days, I simply raise my vibration, set a high intention, tune in, ask Spirit for guidance, and relay what I receive.

The key to success in all of this is approaching it from a very high vibration. This is why general spiritual growth and development is recommended as a foundation to psychic exploration, and also why people have wildly different results in their psychic experiments. People who explore the occult from a desire for power or out of curiosity are the ones who become subjects of scary books and TV shows about the dark forces that can be unleashed when fools wander in where angels fear to tread. By contrast, people who devote themselves to sincere spiritual development in order to answer a divine calling can become miracle workers in that they help people find deep healing and empowerment where conventional therapies fail.

I thus encourage you to set a high healing intention, always center yourself in divine love and integrity, and ask Spirit to guide you to the best way to move toward your dream of helping people with your spiritual gifts.

- Julia

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